Mailchimp

We use Mailchimp to send emails directly to our members. Mailchimp is a powerful tool that allows us to manage our members' information and campaign data.

How members are added to the list

Marketing laws have established that we must receive permission from contacts before we send them promotional emails (e.g. a consent tick box giving us permission to send them emails). Read The Importance of Permission.

To join our email list, members must first be a DVS member at any level. One of the questions in the sign up form asks if they want to subscribe to our emails. When a member wants to be part of our email list, a Zapier automation begins and their information is imported into Mailchimp.

Something to note is that many members who are on our email list are not signed up as a DVS member, i.e. they are not registered in Memberspace. This is because DVS Memberships launched in June 2021, and DVS was founded in 2019.

How to send emails with Mailchimp

1. Log into Mailchimp, go to "Campaigns", and you can create a campaign by
   • creating a new one from "Email Templates", click the arrow beside "Edit", click "Create Campaign"
   • duplicate previous ones from "All Campaigns", click the arrow beside "View Report", click "Replicate"
2. Setting up the campaign
   • To: Specify the audience, which would depend on the newsletter being sent. For example, if it's the monthly newsletter, select "DVS Members", then select the segment "Preference - General". Check the "Personalise the 'To' field", and select "*|FNAME|*"
   • From: By default, the Name is "Data Visualization Society and the email address is "hello@datavisualizationsociety.org". The Operations Director will receive replies from this email.
   • Subject: Keep it short and to the point. Subject lines will impact open rates. Consider what would pique the reader's interest when writing this.
   • Content: This is where you can edit the contents of the email. The templates make it easy for you to get straight to putting content and images together.
   • At the bottom, update the "Campaign link" so it's relevant. For example, if it's the monthly newsletter, update it to "July-2022". This makes it easy to find the links to the emails. The July newsletter is: https://mailchi.mp/datavisualizationsociety/july-2022, while the previous month is simply https://mailchi.mp/datavisualizationsociety/june-2022.
3. Sending the email: When you're done designing the email and setting up the campaign, it's time to send it to the audience! You can schedule emails to go out immediately, or for a later time.
   • Send: At the top right, you can click on 'Send' and it will be delivered immediately
   • Schedule: At the top right, you can send it for a later time.
     • Delivery date: Select the date you want to send them email out
     • Sent Time Optimization: Mailchimp will determine the ideal time to send the email. You can use this by default.
     • Send at a specific time: Select the time to send it out. The account is set up in Eastern Time zone. This is useful if you have a specific deadline you must release the email.
     • Timewarp: This is a fantastic feature that should be used whenever possible. DVS members come from different parts of the world, and thus live in different time zones. Timewarp allows you to send emails at a specific time, in the audience's time zone. Say if you select the email to go out at 1pm with Timewarp, it will arrive in their inbox 1pm local time. The catch to using this feature is emails must be scheduled 24 hours in advance in your time zone.

Sending emails to our members

Be mindful of the audience you select when sending emails. We have several. The main one, which is also the largest, is called "DVS members". Check the Content Calendar to see when emails will go out.

There are 4 emails that are regularly sent out.

1. Monthly newsletter
   • Watch videos on how to send this newsletter: Part 1 (5 mins), Part 2 (5 mins)
   • This email is sent out at the end of each month by the Communications Manager, who reviews content and optimizes the writing, and the Virtual Assistant transfers the content from the Google Doc to Mailchimp and schedules it. We provide our members news about upcoming programs and events in this newsletter.
   • Use the "DVS Monthly" email template
   • To: DVS members, segment "Preference - General"
   • From: Name (Amanda at DVS), email (hello@datavisualizationsociety.org)
   • Subject: "DVS [month year] Update", e.g. "DVS August 2022 Update"
   • Content: One week prior to when it goes out, an email is sent out to the entire DVS team calling for updates and content to include in the email. Content can be found in this Google Drive folder.
   • Campaign Link: update it to current month and year, e.g. "july-2022"
2. The 'Gale
   • Audience: The "Gale
     • This email is sent out by the Nightingale Team. They send emails to the "The 'Gale" audience.
3. Learning & Career
   • This email is sent out each month, and it's put together by the Communications Manager. There is no specific theme for each month, it focuses on last month's content related to learning and career, and such as recent Fireside Chats, or Nightingale posts. It might also highlight workshops or project jams that DVS hosts.
   • Use the "DVS Learning & Career" email template
   • To: DVS members, segment "Preference - Learning & Career"
   • From: Name (Data Visualization Society), email (hello@datavisualizationsociety.org)
   • Subject: Learning & Career #5 (update the number increasing it by 1, see what was the previous number)
   • Campaign Link: learning-career-5 (update the number to match the subject)
4. Events
   • Watch a video walkthrough(5 mins) on how to send this newsletter.
   • This email is sent out each month by the Virtual Assistant. This email gathers links from the Data Viz calendar, focus on highlighting community events and conferences in the next 30 days. Our calendar is populated by community members, and we sometimes get paid courses there. Avoid highlighting courses in the newsletter, we always nudge members to see the calendar for more upcoming events, so they can still find out about these courses by seeing the calendar.
   • Use the "DVS Events" email template
   • To: DVS members, segment "Preference - Events"
   • From: Name (Data Visualization Society), email (hello@datavisualizationsociety.org)
   • Subject: Upcoming Dataviz Events #5 (update the number increasing it by 1, see what was the previous number)
   • Campaign Link: data-viz-events-1 (update the number to match the subject)

We also send out the following emails:

• IIB Awards
  • Use the "IIB Awards" email template
  • There are two audiences to consider for the Awards.
    1. "Information is Beautiful Awards": 6,642 contacts. This list is from David McCandless. We are not growing this list by soliciting email signups.
    2. "DVS Audience" (segment: 'IIB Awards Updates"). Any member in the DVS Audience list has been crosschecked with the "Information is Beautiful Awards" list from David and tagged with "IIBA". New members added to DVS Audience is checked through a Zapier automation if they are on David's list. If they are, they are automatically tagged a "IIBA". The segment "IIB Awards Updates" selects everyone EXCEPT those tagged with "IIBA". This ensures that we do not send duplicate emails to the same contacts.
  • When we send out emails, we must send two separate email campaigns. The first is with everyone on the list "Information is Beautiful Awards". The second is to "DVS Audience", select the segment "IIB Awards Updates".

Miscellaneous

• We have a segment called "Memberspace Members" in the "DVS Audience" list. This segment is created by identifying if they have been tagged with "Basic", "General", "General (Income-Conscious)", "General + Print", or "Patron". These are all the membership tiers established with the membership launch, and contacts are tagged this through Zapier if they signed up as a DVS Member. We don't use this segment much, but it's available if needed. Keep in mind that there are some members who are signed up in Memberspace, but did not opt-in to sign up to our email list. If you ever need to send out mass emails to Memberspace members, use Zapier.
• We have a segment called "Nightingale Magazine Print Subscribers" in the "DVS Audience" list. They are in this segment if they are tagged with "Patron", "General + Print", "Nightingale Print (Add-on)", or "Nightingale Print Magazine". This segment is a list of members who purchased the Nightingale Magazine in 2022, so it may have members who do not purchase future issues.
• We have a segment called "Paid Members [General + Patron]" in the "DVS Audience" list. This segment is created by identifying if they have been tagged with "General", "General (Income-Conscious)", "General + Print", or "Patron" We have previously sent emails to this group when asking them to vote for new slate of Board Members, and about new discounts with partners.

Groups and Tags in Mailchimp

In Mailchimp, groups and tags act in similar ways.

• Groups: A group is how your audience can organize their email preferences
  • To see groups, go to "All Contacts", under "Manage Contacts", select "Groups"
  • The second group called: "What content do you want to see? (Select multiple)" allows audience members to personalize the emails they get. If you ever want to edit the options or even the text here, you must also update it in Zapier! When a member signs up to our email list, by default they are checked for all three options (General, Events, and Learning & Career) through Zapier. If you ever update the text in Mailchimp, Zapier will no longer recognize it, and cannot properly include contacts to these categories. So if you need to update them, go to Zapier and reset the options, by editing the "Gsheet to Mailchimp" zap, expand the "Action" section, update "Groups" by deleting the existing ones, and selecting the updated ones.
  • We allow audience members to update what emails they receive from us by updating their preferences. This allows us to send emails that are relevant to them. You can update how the preferences looks by clicking on "All Contacts" select "Signup forms".
• Tags: A tag is an internal way for you to categorize the audience.
  • An example is the IIBA tag, which lists anyone in the "DVS Members" audience who is also in the "Information is Beautiful Awards" audience. This tag is not visible to our audience, but we have this information so we can send targeted messages. We also tag audiences by their DVS membership level, such as if they are a General member, or a Patron.

Regular routine cleanups

We are on a Mailchimp legacy plan called Pay As You Go. This plan lets us have unlimited Audience lists and it is billed by the number of contacts we have per audience. Duplicate contacts count more than once. Say if we have contact x in the DVS Audience list and The 'Gale audience, we are billed for 2 contacts, even if they're email is the same. Whenever you are setting up a new audience, keep this in mind because it affects how we get billed.

If we are ever done with an audience and do not need to use it anymore, you can Archive the contacts. Archived contacts do not count towards our plan and we will retain all their data. You can unarchive contacts at any time.